Friday, November 8, 2013

Many a
times am asked if the Business House should get onto Facebook Page or Facebook
Group. Do you also face this dilemma? It is a very justified question. The
reason being that after all time energy and lot of thinking would
be utilized in Social Media. Using a wrong platform could mean the
Business House will not be able to achieve its desired objective.

There is
a simple way to understand what you should do. You need to understand what you
are going to do. What is it that you want to achieve. Also you need to
have a clear idea on how Groups and Pages function. What is feasible on them
and what is not feasible. This then you should match with what exactly you are
planning on Facebook.

Facebook
Group can be used for varied purpose. For instance:

Family
based Groups: When you put up photos and messages not all of your Facebook
friends / list can be disturbed and interfered with.

Close
friends Groups: You will have your privacy and just have your gang / group
of friends communicating without the world really interfering onto your
team.

Colleagues
team up on a task / project: If your work environment suggests that you
have a team then enable the Groups to have updates and status reports come
up on the Groups wall for all to view at same time; comments will be seen
and interacted / acted upon as well.

And
so on, Facebook Groups have a reason to exists.

Coming back to
our question should you look at Facebook Pages or Facebook Groups? Pages have
people from all walks of life connecting to you via a single Page. Now let’s
assume [or maybe you have already experienced] a situation wherein your
Facebook Pages has a broad value. Say for example if your Page philosophy /
intent / purpose / reach is broad based and people who have joined your Page
get very involved. You may now see that there is a reason to bifurcate into
smaller groups. The reason being that certain people are addressing a
particular issue. For this you need not create another Fan Page what you need
now is to create small Facebook Groups.

So in business you need to create Facebook
Groups strategically. Such that while you have your main Facebook Page as
umbrella, the various Facebook Groups could be created to address more in-depth
conversations / issues.